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Wednesday, August 05, 2015

There is nothing that corrupts conservatives quite as much as the need to be nice.

Conservatives are natural optimists who see the world as being basically a nice place. They are nice because they think that the world is nice. That worldview is not reciprocated by the other side.

Where conservatives see a country store, liberals see an oppressive outpost of capitalism. Where conservatives see a family, liberals see abusive patriarchy, oppressive gender norms, religious indoctrination and apple pie. Our current broken family society is the outcome of a cultural war waged against families based on that viewpoint.

The left is convinced that the world is an evil place, that people are basically terrible and that they are the only thing standing between us and the return of human slavery.

It's no wonder that liberals are so nasty.

In political wars, conservatives have to force themselves to be nasty and liberals have to force themselves to be nice. Media control flips the script so that the average person is under the impression, without having listened to either one, that Rush Limbaugh screeches hate at the top of his lungs while Jon Stewart is a fun-loving entertainer, when really it's the other way around.

But the media excels at pumping out one core message; liberals are good people and conservatives are bad people. The details are usually forgettable and buried in a thousand contextualized stories, but the message permeates everything. And even when the public doesn't buy it, conservatives do.

No one wants to be thought of as a villain and when the media manufactures a crisis, particularly when a whirlwind of manufactured stories begins to spin around some tragedy, some conservatives are seduced into trying to be nice guys and girls.

They won't surrender their main principles. Of course not. They'll just make some kind of gesture. Call for fairness. Find common ground with the other side.

Religious leaders rationalize that they'll convert more of the heathen by showing respect for the other side. Political leaders give in to the urging of their kids and their cocktail party milieu. And too many in the rank and file robotically repeat media talking points no matter how they distrust the media.

And the left wins again.

If there's one thing that conservatives need to cure themselves of it's a slavish desire to be nice. Those who give in to it are lost.

Liberals don't suffer from a niceness crisis. They don't find common ground with us. They don't worry that somewhere out there someone dislikes them.

Nice people want to be thought of as nice. They don't like to be thought of as nasty. Nasty people will pretend to be nice, but being hated does not bother them. They thrive on it.

This is really why there is no conservative party. Eventually all those passionate conservatives we send up and have such high hopes for give in to the questions being hurled at them by the media, by their compatriots in government town asking them what they're going to do about fake crisis No. 3.

And eventually they try to find common ground. And they lose and we lose.

It's not just about policy. This is a conflict that takes place in mental and moral spaces. Before the policy, comes the worldview. The left will lose political battles rather than give an inch on its worldview. They view liberals who retreat on any issue as traitors and punish them. Conservatives lose political battles because they open up gaps in their worldview, they make mental and moral concessions, and once they've done that, losing the policy battle is a foregone conclusion.

Winning requires an uncompromised worldview. Lose that and every battle becomes a frenzied clash followed by a strategic withdrawal to the next crucial issue. ObamaCare. Iran. Planned Parenthood. Don't worry, one of these days we'll fight one to the end. Just not this one. Or the next one.

When you have a compromised worldview, then you stand for nothing.

The Republican Party has ten thousand men and women who believe in nothing, but are eager to discuss policy. Their policy ends up being liberal because there is no firewall of conviction.

Conviction is the difference between victory and defeat. Strategy wins battles, but without staying power, the battles never add up to win a war. A president is elected. The Republicans take the Senate. There are Supreme Court justices and a few legal victories. But none of it has any staying power because there is no larger worldview behind it that is uncompromisingly committed to a goal.

A man or woman of conviction does not bend. They are unconcerned with being liked by liberals. They are even less concerned with being hated by them. They are not moved by media stories. They are inflexibly hostile to their emotional manipulations. They do not accept the latest crisis or the latest talking point. Instead they remained determined to force their crisis to its full momentum.

Conservatives are naturally nice. When the world seems to turn against them, they often become embittered. The happy medium of the happy warrior is a difficult one because it requires remaining centered in the 'nice world', the world of families and neighborhoods, of a glorious past that can be used to build a glorious future, while doing battle in the twisted media landscape of the left.

The internet has made that battle harder to fight, but it has also made it easier to find likeminded people to fight it with.

The left thrives on breaking down social connections and isolating people. That is what is behind its war on the family. Into those cracks, it embeds its cultural and academic programming. It models adult life for children and turns adults into children with fake models of life. It manipulates empathy for its political causes. It convinces good people to empathize with evil while disdaining other good people.

Our battle is not merely external, but internal. Totalitarian movements are not just defeated in the ruins of fallen statues and burning palaces, but in the resistance to their messaging in our own minds. By purifying our convictions, we immunize ourselves to tyranny. We become like those great men and women we admired throughout history whose resistance called on an impregnable moral power.

We become firmed in conviction by not giving in to intellectual or emotional manipulation. We do this by rejecting any moral authority on the left whatsoever. We disregard whether the left considers us nice. We cease trying to find common ground with a movement that wants to enslave us.

When we close that door, the left loses its greatest manipulative weapon.

The left claims the media power to decide who is cool, who is nice, who is good and who is bad, who is laughable and contemptible, who is a bigot and who is a saint. It backs up this power with a million voices echoing at every range. When we cease to pay any emotional or moral regard to this pitcher plant, we take the first step toward becoming a movement of conviction rather than convenience.

It sounds easy, but it's a lot harder than you think.

Imagine the next sob story on the news. The one that is targeted directly at your demographic. Ask yourself what its agenda is. What does it really hope to achieve. It's not that hard, but not even 1 percent of Republican voters, the same ones who poll as distrusting the media, will do that.

And of those who do, far too many will still be influenced by it.

The left has been able to keep winning because it has the conviction to set the agenda and too many conservatives allow themselves to be influenced by it. And then a think tank will roll out a "conservative" solution to climate change, illegal alien amnesty or drug policy reform.

And then the left wins.

If we want to be where the left is today, we will need some of that same determination. We will need to realize that we will not win by being nice, but by refusing to let the left's definition of niceness get a foothold in our minds or our souls.

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comments:

Daniel, I hate to burst your bubble, but I have met conservatives that are as sleazy and ideologically blind as and Lefty.

Political orientation and belief does not a "nice" person make. People can be "nice" to others they approve of or like. Doesn't mean they'll behave the same way to all. Some behave the exact same way as Marxists - ie shouting you down, rearranging what you said to suit their perceptions, ranting, raving, misrepresenting, the lot.

Just because they believe in conservative causes doesn't mean they can't act like the worst kind of politically aggressive, ranting Marxist demonstrator.

Sad but true.

Maybe you've been lucky enough to not meet some of these morons, but we're not all so fortunate.

PS I intro'd your piece on Fat Class Warfare to a health writer - he loved it - and he is now an appreciative reader of your blog. So the numbers increase...:)

Another thing - Conservatives lose political battles because many of them are as greedy,unprincipled and happy to take as much money as possible from the taxpaying public as any Lefty.

The gravy train of politics may not always be easy to resist, but reflect that the Left victory over America - and every other democratic country - was won not just by the Left's hard, underground work by the Right's ceding of the country to their apparent political counterparts. The Right likes its parliamentary and political privilege as much as does the Left, and is happy to go along with programs like Sovietisation of American (and democratic) education and Agenda 21 as any hardcore Leftoid.

Nice doesn't mean that all conservatives are all wonderful people and obvious the professional political class is particularly bad in its own way, but in a general sense, conservatives do tend to see the world around them as nice.

Another most excellent post. Reading the above comments makes me a little sad, though. It seems that your point is a bit lost on some of them. The problem isn't that "I can point to 10 un-nice conservatives, so there!" but the very fact that the knee jerk reaction is to point to a few bad apples and proclaim that "they" (those OTHER conservatives) are the problem. Nope. The problem is that conservatives are too nice to see that it doesn't matter if there are greedy this and sleazy that claiming to be conservatives (while strangely advocating very leftist agendas). We're so busy defeating ourselves that the left's work is made easy.

Like "conservatives" working on "conservative" answers to faux crises (global warming, climate change, the coming ice age---they can't even make up their minds what their "settled" science says, but we're eager to help them . . . do something!), conservatives cringe at the thought that we might be a part of the problem by being, as you say, "too nice." We're not only accommodating, but we are actively working against ourselves to ensure that our ideas and worldview are defeated. It's really quite stunning.

After all, there are "nice" lefties, too, but that doesn't change the fact that as a whole, the thoroughly un-nice progressive left is winning, and they are winning because they ignore the "nice" among them and move forward with their multi-pronged war. They essentially bully and shame their "nice" members into red-faced mumbling acceptance of whatever the cause du jour.

The left sees a "blue dog" dem (now nearing extinction) and quietly gets rid of them, they don't whinge and whine about it and "oh woe is me" it to death, while gaging the whole war lost because there are some of those darned nice lefties out there who just won't go along with the various progressive agendas of destruction. They get rid of them or silence them (effectively the same thing).

That our first reaction is to point to ourselves as the problem is yet more evidence of our "niceness." We'd do sooooo much better if only there weren't SOME meany pants conservatives who make us all look bad. Really??! That's the response to Daniel's post? With this thinking, we are well and truly doomed.

Okay. Now, to the post. :) One thing that I've noticed is that we conservatives are very adverse to doing much more than voting and then sitting back and waiting for our elected representatives to do what they were elected to do on our behalf. The left did this, too, for about twenty-five years before realizing that was idealistic and insane.

We need to get the same clue. Fast. We voted overwhelming for conservatives in 2010 and 2014, and when they don't do what we want, we complain and whine and point fingers and yell at the television and . . . that's it. We don't do anything to force change as the left does. We just vote and hope for the best, and when it doesn't go as we hoped, we complain to each other about it. We say this person is a spineless RINO and that person is a squishy globalist/pro-amnesty/pro-CommonCore/etc. & etc. loser. But we don't DO anything.

Granted, in 2009, we did actually make some moves that were really threatening to the left, namely the TEA Party movement. That scared the socks off them because they never saw it coming and didn't know how to shut us up . . . at first. Clearly, they figured it out. So now, instead of storming town halls, marching on Washington, organizing ourselves, and being effective, we just go to the voting booth and then . . . well, nothing.

The left does things. They organize. They have citizen "armies" who make it their goal to ensure that there are lawsuits, social media campaigns, educators at every level indoctrinating our children, and a hundred other things working in their favor at all times. They boycott this and have letter and email campaigns against that, they are always busy chipping away at big and small business, at social norms, at legal precedent, at everything that is moral and good.

Us? We vote.

Oh, and we complain. A lot. To ourselves and to each other.

That's not really working out very well for us.

Most conservatives I know aren't even willing to listen to simple push back ideas like cutting off the money to the more offensive leftists who literally hate us and want to see us dead by refusing to send them money for their "art." Conservatives are so "nice," we actually believe that while Matt Damon (Ben Affleck, Moran Freeman, toss in your favorite lunatic leftie) is screaming that the TEA Party are racists who shouldn't be allowed to live in America, we should be paying money to watch his (their) films. That's different, they say. That's a movie, his political views shouldn't matter. But they do. To him. He uses that enormous popularity, that giant platform and microphone to bash the very people who are paying his salary. We just shrug and keep going to his movies.

The left gets this and so much more that we are just too nice to implement. I'm not saying we should be scouring obscure corners of the internet to learn every actor or singer's political views, but if they make it their business to be at Occupy events, to turn up in Baltimore, to publicize their hatred of conservatives and America, we should make it our business to not give them our business. But conservatives don't really see this, or if they do, it seems so . . . mean and unfair.

By the time we get it together, it may be too late. I hope not, but . . . it's not looking good.

The left does organize. It's the heart of what they do. They use any position they have to push a common agenda. They support each other.

We don't.

They function, with some gaps, as a collective organization. The Tea Party was scary when it was doing grass roots organizing. It stopped being scary once the usual professional crowd took it over and turned into an opportunity to cash in.

The left, if you listen to them, has an ongoing nightmare of a populist right. They have no clue just how disorganized conservatives really are.

The "nice" people on the left are moving out of the Democrat party and becoming "Independents"; they don't like or engage in the lynch mob mentality, but they do buy into the lie that the Democrats are the "nice" people who "care" while Republicans "hate" women, minorities, et al. and "fear" progress and science. They're not well-informed and don't seem to want to be, but that's probably their main sin. Being stupid and ignorant doesn't make them evil, but it does make them dangerous because they will always, indie or no, vote (D) over (R) because they believe the media, the culture . . . their eyes (what they see is filtered through leftist ideological lenses). What is in front of them, always, is leftist agendas, leftist causes. They will believe that the Planned Parenthood selling of babies and baby parts is a lawful transfer of "tissue" because they just don't care to know otherwise or they don't think there's an otherwise to know.

Unwise. Stupid. Ill-informed. Unaware. Willfully ignorant. All of that, yes, but these are the confused that we can still win over if we ever got our act together. The far left hasn't won them . . . they're not tweeting hate and pooping on cop cars; they're actually appalled by that side of their side. They just don't see a better option.

We need to make it our mission to show them a better option. We know we've got the right ideas and the fairest, best solutions for the most people (leftists actually know this, too, that's why they fight us so hard and dirty), but we just aren't good at getting that message out. Overcoming a leftist media, leftist education system, leftist entertainment industry, leftist . . . everything won't be easy, but we have to do it. They did it. It's doable.

Their nightmare of the populist right is real, but WE don't know it. Every poll says that Americans are conservative, that we hate just about everything the left stands for, and that we are, as a nation, becoming more conservative as the Obama agenda unfolds.

We're the ones who don't get that; they're right to be worried. If we ever did realize this en mass and push back as a unified "populist right," they'd be done. They know it. Sadly, we don't.

Exactly! I cannot count the times the left tries to use my Christianity against me and it's been hard to combat, but I know they are so evil and ideologically corrupt I refuse to let it stop me.

I like to fight them with facts and sarcastic humor. It really makes them mad, but makes it more tolerable. It doesn't take long to figure out most of their tactics and when that happens you're home free.

The massive, beyond perceptible, American state permeates the country. A million ratcheting moments of government procedure built it. The market, capitalism, the entrepreneurial spirit, all gave way to the game of bureaucratic manipulation. Players get income, a myth of safety, and a morality validated by how much money they made playing the state game. Left/right, Dem/Repub, conservative/liberal - these became anachronisms, fools errands for old people with time on their hands for building cases. Game players have no time or interest in proving such points. They're busy raking it in by playing along with every manner of cash rich state apparatus.

I doubt you fix this system with quaint arguments about fundamentals - true as they may be.

In the blogosphere there is surfacing a movement that refers to itself as "reactionary" or sometimes "neoreactionary". It was from this that the term "cuckservative" has arisen. It is made up of people who are fed up with being pushed around by the left and betrayed by the "conservative" right. They appear to be as uncompromising and willing to exercise ruthlessness in pursuit of their ideals as the left.

But, like the hard core left, this movement is made up of a mix of different groups some of whom are quite unpleasant and dangerously extreme in their views. It seems to me that what is developing could be the core of committed, uncompromising and thick-skinned activists needed to counter the left and actually roll back its agenda. The problem is that people of the right, as pointed out in this essay, don't really want to associate with some of the nasties that seem to be invariably found in and around such movements.

I can think of no political or social movement that has succeeded that did not have, at its core, some quite rough characters. How do we get "nice" conservatives to associate with, even support, people that they find repellent? How does the left manage this? Daniel, do you have any ideas on this?

Rough characters are one thing, but it's important to keep track of the agendas of the people you're dealing with and what kind of society they're fighting for, how far down the road you can go down with them before they turn on you.

Outsourcing activism carries its own risk.

I don't claim to be an expert, but "Cuckservative" seems to be less neo-reaction, which isn't all that concerned with race, than with neo-Nazis and that sort. I don't see Mencius talking up "Cuckservative".

Personally I think the right needs to place a greater emphasis on local reactions to left-wing abuses of power, e.g. Gamergate. This is the model of community org that the left has used successfully. The right needs to get much better about hooking up with various local causes and organizing them together.

That would create a mirror of the Obama coalition of the greedy and the angry.

Daniel, you said: "The left is convinced that the world is an evil place, that people are basically terrible and that they are the only thing standing between us and the return of human slavery." This is not strictly true. In every 'first world' country the left believe that about their OWN country and other first world countries; but they also believe that all people in second and third world countries (include all Muslim countries) are basically like-minded people like them because they have not been corrupted by capitalist first world values.

Who are the preppers, survivalists and religious Christians who are Apocalypse-minded? They aren't liberals, nor do they see the rest of the world as a mostly nice place; they are of a doomsday mindset but hope to live through it. And like Conservatives, many liberals are unbending in their convictions, although certainly they are of a very different mindset. My point is that there are morons - - and nice people - - on both sides. When you make these kinds of sweeping, blanket generalizations you do your arguments no favor.

I don't know so much that I'd call conservatives 'nice' as I'd call them people inherntly disposed to play by the rules. Of course, there are exceptions, but most conservatives, by definition, value the established order. Radicals, otoh, thrive on dismantling the established order and have no qualms about exceeding boundaries.

It think that accounts for the Right's essential political foolishness in adhering to so-called 'gentlemen's agreements,' the result of which has been the overthrow of American society and the establishment of its current totalitarian-left government.

Daniel, the phrase cuckservative is gaining popularity because those on the right are exhausted of the conservatives selling out and acting against their interests. The conservative policies such as open borders, free trade are very good for the ultra wealthy but bad for most Americans and yet few conservatives will even make the pretense of opposing them.

As an aside one of the few success stories of the right is the ongoing Hugo awards situation. The Left used their standard tactics of defamation and divide and conquer but this time it hasnt worked, because those being defamed didn't care.

Many conservatives argue the exact opposite: that while liberals believe in a mushy, hippy dippy way that the world and people are basically nice, conservatives, because they embrace the doctrine of original sin, see the "warped timber" of humanity for what it is.

Daniel, this is truly one of the best columns I have read in the past 8 years, maybe even before that. THANK YOU. I am sending this out to friends, family, and GOP legislators/state party leaders.

This hit home because recently a GOP state legislator here in Colorado was "condemned" by unnamed GOP leaders after he stated his private opinion on his private website about the Boy Scouts welcoming homosexual scout leaders. Immediately the LGBT fascists and Democrat legislators went in to hyperdrive calling for his discipline with the ultimate goal of making sure he never gets elected again. I went into action asking people to contact all the GOP legislators, GOP state party officers, etc. telling them to stand up to the LGBT bullies, not to cower in fear of them. This legislator had every right to his opinion and the GOP should have stood up for the Constitutional values of free speech and religious liberty. Instead they "tried to make nice" with the left by "condemning" the legislator for what he said. Of course the media loved the story. So the GOP accomplished only one thing and that was to embolden the left more. http://www.krdo.com/news/springs-representatives-comments-on-boy-scout-leadership-policy-change-sparks-controversy/34429106 Until the GOP learns to stand up for liberty and freedom for all they are nothing but a cooked goose.

Many Republican Congressional candidates posing as conservative have made an accurate calculation. Namely, that if they keep weaseling out of strong action in Congress, the serially betrayed conservatives will still vote for them next time against any Democrat. While many conservative choose to abstain, enough are left for the faux-conservatives to get reelected.

I am a conservative and I don't compromise on my principles. My motto is kick ass and take no prisoners! I will not try to accommodate idiotic leftist crap ideology. I am not politically, correct, am not popular, AND I DON'T CARE!!! More of us should throw leftist stupidity back in their faces and not try to find common ground with them. A real leftist is not interested in the facts but only his own agenda. They are beyond reason and are fanatical in their beliefs.

Daniel, you've explained the popularity of Donald Trump. Finally, a Republican unafraid of speaking his mind who couldn't care less what the opposition or even his own party has to say in response. And the more his distractors attack him the more popular he becomes. In short, a man of courage.

Some amount of greed and sleaze is inevitable in politics (and pretty much everywhere else). I'd rather have a moderately greedy leader who actually fights than a perfectly altruistic one who lets the left walk all over him. (Although even that would be an improvement over the greedy, sleazy AND submissive GOP we have now.)

Even in war, there are certain legal and moral boundaries, but you have to be willing to walk that very fine line right up to the edge of them. Otherwise you're like a general afraid of killing "too many" of the other side, or afraid of winning because it'll hurt the feelings of the other side. That's the whole point, you have to convince them that they are defeated (i.e., hurt their feelings) or else they'll keep fighting. Or, perhaps worse, like someone who plants the seeds of doubt that maybe you're going too far when you're really not. (Scrupulosity.) At that point you're effectively playing for the other team.

"Cuckservative" is basically just a Twitter hashtag, but it does serve the useful and amusing function of annoying the right people. There was some professional conservative pundit who raged for days about the horrific insult to his adopted black child. The invective was probably harsher than anything he'd ever aimed at the left, thus proving the point. It helps to have a sense of humor about this sort of thing, which is something the left sorely lacks.

Also, for the autistic nitpickers, yes of course it's a somewhat broad generalization, which is true in certain senses of the word "nice" but not others. It's a blog post, not a definitive multi-volume reference. Try to give people the benefit of the doubt and to stick to the essential points, otherwise you look petty.

You may be right and probably know more about it than I do. I just get suspicious when people start throwing around the standard left defamation terms like "neo-nazi, "racist," "sexist," "homophobe," etc.

Actually, The Constitution was designed by 185h century "liberals" who understood that humans are not "good", many want to control others. The founders tried to prevent that. After 200 years of assault, they may have lost.

I no longer give quarter to any leftist. When talking about immigration I usually ask "what don't you get about ILLEGAL"? I try to make them own the senseless murder of millions of children to abortion. Especially the targeting of African Americans, calling it what it is GENOCIDE. Now the ghoulish selling of body parts at tax payer expense,I tell them they are no better than the neighboring communities outside the Nazi concentration camps, that they must raise an alarm or be doomed to HELL. The fallacy of Global warming costing consumers (them) billions of dollars. I will no longer pull any punches if a liberal relative or acquaintance dares to brings up any of these subjects, whether in my shop or in the church foyer. Don't even mention BHO if you don't want your ears singed. Zero tolerance to liberal propaganda.

From a strictly etymological view, "cuckservative" means what it obviously means. A low-testosterone, effete, over-dressed, submissive type of person who is more concerned with not being calling a "racist" on CNN than with advancing the interests of the United States. Someone who would watch his wife/country going at it with someone of a more primitive race.

But, yes, I have seen many people who clearly have some animus toward Jews attaching themselves to this idea. Apart from being racist or whatever, this is just stupid, since the interests of (real, religious) Jews and Israel largely align closely with the interests of white American Christian conservatives. There may be some disagreement on the necessity of Bush's wars among the libertarian Paul camp, but I don't think many Israelis consider that a deal-breaker. And if your issue is with Karl Marx and Walter Benjamin, well they are more atheists than Jews, and, from what I gather, religious Jews don't like them either. The far left Jews are more leftists than they are Jews. And anyway aren't Ashkenazi Jews just about the highest average IQ? You really sure you want to pick a fight with them?

Jacques Barzun noted that ideas that are supressed will eventually become popular because of their suppression. That seems to be what's happening here. Western cultural memory is now far enough from the 1940's to somewhat permit anti-Jewish sentiment. Now, this is wrong, but it's not wrong because distrust toward a particular race is always wrong. No, it's wrong because anyone with an IQ above 90 would want Jews on their side, and any Christian would realize they have a lot more in common with (real, religious) Jews than they do with Muslims, Hindus or atheists.

A rational Christian conservative would want to make common cause with conservative Jews. They share enough beliefs, especially when compared to the Muslim or atheist alternative, to make an alliance feasible and productive. So why some #cuckservative Twitter personalities chose to play on the idea of "Jewish influence" etc. is puzzling from a rational point of view. But recalling Barzun, they know they can stir the pot by introducing old Europe anti-Semitic ideas / "dog whistles" which have been supressed. The supression has created the interest. It is just narcissistic self-promotion; they will say anything for five more Twitter followers.

Recalling that our interests are aligned, I am not sure it is wise to dismiss #cuckservative entirely. Israel is strong enough to survive a few Twitter trolls. The more important target is the low-testosterone right that is more concerned with being "not a racist" than with defending the United States.

Political activists often leave their 'niceness' at the door..Being engaged in a blood sport tends to do that to people.As to the conservative voters, they showed their bigotry by staying home in the last election, and watching an obviously 'nice' guy lose because he was too rich and too Mormon. The fact that he was not cool, and not hip enough, should have been far outweighed by the obvious corruption of the opposing candidate.sophie

Yes. Leftists are pointing to and praising John Kasich's remarks about same sex marriage. The Supreme Court has spoken, etc etc. The Republican Party wishes the issue would go away so it can talk about business and why we need more immigrants. Like that.

Compare that to the left's reaction to Citizens United. Are they saying that the Sup Ct has spoken and therefore we need to shut up about this? No. They attack that decision at every opportunity - even the President attacked it in a State of Union address.

Conservatives need to take a leaf from the left's book here. Never ever capitulate. I do not think a Constitutional amendment declaring marriage to be limited to one man and one woman will ever pass, but one declaring marriage regulation to be the province of the states just might. There are many ssm supporters who also support states' rights and therefore could be persuaded to support such an amendment. Should this be successful (and it would take years) then attack the notion of ssm state by state. But attack the notion under any circumstances.

Here is what is really called for Daniel. The conservative group does not have to give up their "niceness". It is more along the lines of Col. Jessup in "A Few Good Men" = "*You can't handle the truth!*"

Or The Operative in "Serenity":

"The Operative: I'm sorry. If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to. You should have taken my offer. Or did you think none of this was your fault? Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: I don't murder children. The Operative: I do. If I have to. Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Why? Do you even know why they sent you? The Operative: It's not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin. Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: So me and mine gotta lay down and die... so you can live in your better world? The Operative: I'm not going to live there. There's no place for me there... any more than there is for you. Malcolm... I'm a monster.What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done."

All of the 'normal' citizens can rest in their beds at night because there will be a few who will do the dirty work for them.

Our founding fathers realized and undestood that human nature hadn't changed for 1000's of years. Their attempt to create a country to be governed under the rule of law and not by men, knowing the good and evil of human nature, was nothing short of a miraculous. To even think that it has lasted this long is simply amazing. Freedom was the conviction that created America and it was to become the shining light for the rest of the world to follow. Everyone wanted to go to America, they still do. Ever since it's creation, America has been challenged by old and failed ideologies, the ugly side of human nature. I am in local town politics and fighting the Liberals. I am not on the sidelines complaining, I am doing and taking the hits with my fellow comrades and we are slowly winning and taking back our town. If it is good at the bottom, it will be good at the top. Nobody wakes up one day and decides to be president. They all come from some where local. I'm also not nieave about old world families with their financial power houses pulling the strings throughout the world for their own purposes. I do not have the power to control that. But as a conservative, my conviction is simple, it is to be free, the freedom my forefathers allowed me, and will live, fight, and die for my freedom. I will not be "nice" to anyone who is stealing my freedom. This I know.